Fun with Furniture
by radical-rebel
Summary: One shot. Written as a birthday present for my beta. Harry and Draco have an adventure in a Muggle furniture store with very little plot and a high probability of OOCness. You have been warned. HPDM.


_A/N: This story exists purely for the sake of amusement, and most particularly for the amusement of one specific friend of mine. It doesn't really have a plot. If that bothers you, I suggest you click the back button. But if you're looking for a pointless bit of fun with some random snogging thrown in, this might just be the right story for you._

_The idea originated with a trip to the furniture store Ikea (if you've never gone there, I highly recommend it) a few months ago. I went with one of my best friends - my beta, who leaves anonymous reviews under the name Molliewobbles. We were walking through the bedroom section, and we came to the almost-simultaneous conclusion that a fic in which Harry and Draco had adventures in a Muggle furniture store - and more specifically, in the bedroom section - would be really awesome. She said I should write it, and I agreed, and that was the end of it. Until now, when her birthday came around and I decided to write it as a birthday present._

_So that's pretty much the whole gist of the story. Harry and Draco go to a Muggle furniture store (that resembles Ikea, but remains unnamed), have crazy adventures, buy furniture, make out, and are probably slightly out of character. The plot eluded me, so it's highly possible that the characters may have as well. But as long as it makes Mollie laugh, it's all good. And if anybody else out there happens to enjoy it, that's just a plus.  
_

_Happy birthday Mollie! Thanks for being so awesome! You rock my world!_

_Disclaimer: JKR. Not me._

* * *

FUN WITH FURNITURE

"Harry, do we _seriously_ have to go in there?"

The black-haired man rolled his eyes at the whining coming from his partner.

"Yes, Draco, we do," he said, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible. "You did say you wanted us to have the highest quality furniture for our new apartment, after all. According to everyone I've spoken to, this is the best place to go. Even if it is Muggle," he added quickly, preventing Draco's imminent retort before the blond could even open his mouth. Draco crossed his arms and sulked instead.

The furniture store was enormous: it was three stories high and at least two kilometers long from end to end, with doors that Harry secretly suspected were built to admit giants. The parking lot alone could probably fit twenty of them comfortably and still have enough room for a few customers to park without fear of their car getting crushed. If this was just the outside of the place, Harry had a feeling that his chances of successfully getting Draco inside of it had just dropped significantly.

Well, he supposed a little challenge once and a while couldn't hurt anyone.

As they approached the building, Draco surveyed it skeptically, his arms still crossed firmly across his chest.

"I never said I wanted to be personally involved in the furniture shopping, you know," he remarked pointedly – another of his valiant, last minute attempts to get out of the afternoon's activities. He'd been working on it ever since the moment Harry had announced his intentions of Apparating to the store about an hour ago.

"So I'm just supposed to do it all by myself, am I?" Harry asked, looking at his boyfriend with both eyebrows raised. When Draco shrugged, Harry began to walk again. "Alright," he said without turning. "I guess I _could_ send you home and go in alone. But of course, if some mysterious illness overcomes me and everything I pick out is colored some variation of plaid, you can't blame me. _You_ were the one who decided to leave."

Harry looked around just in time to see the horrified expression on Draco's face. It was gone an instant later, replaced by an enormous, false smile as he scampered to catch up with Harry. "This is so exciting!" he gushed, linking his arm in Harry's. "I've always dreamed of spending an afternoon in a Muggle furniture store! Haven't you?"

"Now _that's_ the spirit," Harry laughed, placing a chaste kiss on his boyfriend's cheek and thanking his good luck. He knew that, even though Draco would never admit it, he was nervous. In fact, he was surprised that he had even gotten Draco out of the door in the first place.

The wizarding world was trying harder than ever – and had been ever since the end of the war two years ago – to help its members grow accustomed to Muggle ways; aside from offering Muggles Studies at Hogwarts, classes were held at the Ministry that taught adult wizards basic Muggle interaction skills such as how to wear Muggle clothing, answer a telephone, or buy vegetables at a grocery store. Articles in _The Daily Prophet_ encouraged wizards to make one outing per week in Muggle areas, and learning to drive was often promoted, especially for such outings. Ministry officials hoped to diminish the wizarding community's long-standing, sometimes unconscious fear of Muggle life by making them learn as much about it as they possibly could.

On a whole, Harry found their tactics to be very effective. Admittedly, there probably wasn't much else a government could go in an attempt to prevent another Muggle-hating psychopath from trying to gain power. An education did go a long way, after all. But somehow, even with both the Ministry and his boyfriend supporting him, Draco's experience with Muggle things was still limited. Light switches baffled him, washing machines were frightening monsters that would eat him if he got too close, and whenever a telephone rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Truthfully, Harry found the telephone thing quite amusing. But since he preferred _not_ to sleep on the floor, he always bit back his laughter and changed the subject.

"Harry?" Draco's anxious voice interrupted his thoughts. "Harry, it's moving! Why is it moving?"

Harry looked up to see that they were in front of the doors to the store. The _automatic_ doors, at which Draco was currently hissing.

"Draco, they're supposed to do that," he explained. "They're using electricity, not magic. Muggles just like to find ways to make simple things even easier. It makes them feel special."

Draco shot an icy glare at the doors as they walked through them. "Special or not, it's still creepy," he muttered. "They shouldn't be doing that without magic. One might think it was a curse or–"

But they were officially inside the store now, and he broke off. His eyes widened as he took in the sea of Muggles that now surrounded him, and he instinctively cringed closer to Harry.

"What are we looking for, precisely?" he asked faintly.

Again, for the sake of sleeping in a bed that night, Harry bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

"Well, we need a couch for the living room, and maybe even a chair if we find one we like. A small table for the dining room would be nice too; then we could give Ron and Hermione's extra back to them. Oh, and I'd like to take a look at silverware, if we have the time."

"Right. Yes, I'm also rather fond of giving them back their table. Who knows where that thing's been?" Draco looked around determinedly. Harry got the feeling he was trying to distract himself from the horrors of a Muggle-filled building. Or maybe the horrors of the table. He wasn't sure. "That signs say that chairs and couches are on the second floor. This way.

Without waiting for a reply, Draco took hold of Harry's arm and began to forcibly drag him up the stairs, garnering some very odd looks from the other shoppers they passed. The steps were so wide that Harry was tripping over his own feet in his efforts to keep from falling on his face, let alone to keep up with his boyfriend. But when they reached the top of the staircase, Draco came to an abrupt halt for the second time that day, making Harry bump into his back and nearly fall over anyway.

"Sweet Merlin, do people _live_ here?!" he gasped.

Having righted himself once more, Harry looked up to see that the entire floor did indeed appear to be inhabitable. Each set of matching furniture pieces was displayed in its own, realistic, box-like room. They looked as if they had simply been plucked out of someone else's home and set down in the store for safe-keeping, complete with spare blankets, old books on the shelves, and the odd picture frame hanging from the wall. Even though the Dursleys had never actually let him inside a furniture store as a child, Harry had seen photos of them in the advertising magazines that came with the Muggles' Sunday newspaper. Those photos had looked nothing like this.

"No, they live in their own houses," he told Draco reassuringly. "They've just set these up so that you can get an idea of what the furniture would look like in an actual room before you buy it." At least, that was Harry's best guess anyway.

But Draco seemed too overwhelmed to formulate a sentence in response, much less to catch Harry giving an unsure answer. He simply gazed at it all, wide-eyed and in awe.

Harry gave him a minute to soak it all in. Then he gently touched Draco's shoulder and said, "You know, the sooner we pick something, the sooner we can leave. That, and I think that man behind the counter over there is staring at us funny."

Draco only acknowledged Harry's second observation, turning to squint at the employee. "Well, isn't that rude?" he said, sounding entirely like his normal self again. "Doesn't he know he could scare off potential customers that way? Oh well. Come on."

He strode briskly towards the furniture, and Harry dashed to catch up, feeling thoroughly perplexed. Not having many examples to refer back to, Harry couldn't be certain, but he had a feeling that that was one of the fastest mood swings he'd ever witnessed. He seemed to be experiencing that feeling a lot more since he and Draco had gotten together.

"Are you sure there's no history of mental illness in your family?" he asked.

Draco's brow furrowed. "I've told you about a billion times already, yes, I'm sure." He paused to tap his nose thoughtfully. "Although now that I think about it, they _did_ lock Great Aunt Drusilla up in that tower when I was six–"

"Hey, look, a couch!"

Harry ran over to the small, red love-seat and sat down amongst the pillows.

"It's nice, and soft, and colorful, and it's the whole reason we're here," he said. "What do you think?"

"I think your strange methods of changing the subject are very endearing," Draco said, coming to a stop, still standing, in front of Harry and the love-seat.

"I'm glad someone does, but what do you _really_ think?"

"I think I don't like this particular couch."

"Oh."

Draco glanced around the room, sat down on the couch next to Harry, propped his feet up on the coffee table in front of it, and then stood up again. "Yeah. I don't like it," he repeated firmly.

And with that, they went on to the next room. And the next. And the next. To Harry's growing dismay, Draco was extremely hard to please when it came purchasing couches. Most of the time he only spared a single look for each one before declaring it unsuitable.

"Too square," he said of one.

"Too round," of another.

"Too colorful," of a third.

"Not colorful enough," of the next.

Harry just tried to keep up with him. The idea of losing Draco in a store like this scared him a good deal more than the idea of not being able to decide on a couch.

"But I kind of liked that one," he told Draco after what felt like room number two million and twelve. "The colors were nice."

"But it looked like the Weasel's couch old," Draco objected. "And I'd rather not have any more reminders of him in our house, if at all possible."

Harry chuckled under his breath. No matter what Draco might say, he and Ron had started to develop a bizarre sort of friendship over the last few months. The insults were at a record low, and they could sit in each other's company for more than two hours at a time without trying to kill each other. They had even begun to play chess or gobstones sometimes – usually when Harry and Hermione were discussing something which they found to be dull. When Ron had beaten Draco at chess last week, they had even shaken hands after the game. Hermione had sneaked a picture of them – "for posterity's sake" – by hiding around the corner and snapping it while they weren't looking.

"Aha!" Draco shouted triumphantly as they approached one of the few rooms they hadn't been in yet. "That's the one!"

Harry had to admit, it wasn't a bad choice. Comfortable yet practical, with a subtle hint of color and a slight flair to the design. Having spent the past hour or two fretting about what sort of furniture Draco would want, Harry was pleasantly surprised and relieved. That, and the matching chair was nice too.

"I agree," he told Draco. "We should buy it. And the chair, too."

"But how do we go about that?" Draco wanted to know.

Harry frowned. Honestly, he hadn't the slightest idea.

"Maybe they just expect us to carry it with us?" Grabbing hold of the armrest with both hands, Draco began to heave at it. It slid a little along the floor and emitted a high-pitched squeaking sound as it did so.

"I don't think that's it," Harry tried to say, but Draco wasn't listening. He pulled the couch again, and this time the squeaking noise was more pronounced. An employee from a nearby desk rushed over to them.

"I'm sorry, can I help you gentlemen?" she asked, glaring down her nose at them in a way that clearly said she thought they were up to no good.

Draco had stood upright as soon as he heard her approach. "Yes, thank you," he said, flashing a smile at her. "We were just wondering: how exactly might one go about purchasing this couch?"

The woman looked at him as if he were deranged. "You just take one of those tags down to the warehouse on the first floor," she said, pointing at the tags attached to the side of the piece Draco had been trying to drag away. "There you exchange it for a box with all the pieces in it, and you put it in a cart and carry it to the check-out. Then you take it home and assemble it."

"Thank you very much," Draco said with a small bow in her direction. The woman blinked furiously, as if unsure of how to react, and then nodded at him. She walked away slowly, looking over her shoulder every few steps to make sure they were still there.

Harry reached down and took a tag for both the couch and the chair. "She thought we were daft," he noted. "And I'm not sure if your attempts at politeness helped at all."

"Oh well." Draco sighed. "I tried my best." As they walked out of the room that housed their future couch, he looked up at a nearby sign that told them where all the separate sections of the store were located. He eyed it curiously, pointing at it as he read.

"I'll race you to the dining room section!" he shouted suddenly, and he took off down the hallway to their left. Torn between amusement and despair, Harry shot after him.

"Please don't run in here, sir!" a male employee shouted helplessly after them. Harry suspected the man couldn't have caught them if he tried.

"Of course not! I'm terribly sorry!" he shouted back.

He and Draco didn't stop until they reached their destination.

"I beat you," Draco announced happily as they lay with their upper halves sprawled across the tables, trying to catch their breath. Then he caught sight of all the Muggle appliances around them and completely forgot to keep gloating.

Harry had never realized it until now, but Draco had a bizarre fascination with Muggle appliances. As such, he didn't seem quite so eager to be involved in the finding of this specific piece as he was with the finding of the couch. Instead, he examined every single knob and button on every single oven and refrigerator in sight. For the sake of time, Harry decided not to exert any energy in trying to involve him in the process. He figured he could achieve the same outcome a lot more quickly if he just picked out a table by himself and requested Draco's opinion before he made up his mind to buy it.

"What do you think of this one, Drake?"

"Hmm?" Draco looked up from the oven he was leaning over to investigate. "Oh, that? Sure. That's fine. Oh–!"

Draco had been twisting a small, red-colored knob to see how far it would go, and it had fallen off into the palm of his hand. After a moment of gaping at it, he settled upon opening the oven, throwing the knob inside, and walking away with his hands linked innocently behind his back. Harry ran after him before any of the nearby employees could notice that they'd done anything.

"Well, we have just enough time before we're expected at the Burrow for dinner to go take a look at the silverware downstairs," he told Draco. "And this time, don't break anything."

"It's their fault for making everything so easily breakable," Draco retorted. He paused to study a nearby map that was posted on a wall, tracing his finger from the dot labeled "you are here" to the stairs that lead to the first floor.

"We're already so far from the staircase," he said, "that we'll probably just waste more time if we turn around now. And since the main path is a circle from one side of the stairs to the other, I think it'll be a lot quicker if we continue going the way we're headed."

"Of course, this has nothing to do with any interest you might have in seeing the rest of the store," Harry said.

"Of course," Draco agreed solemnly. "Ooh, look, they have bedrooms over there!"

"Sometimes I worry about you," Harry said, laughing as he allowed himself to be pulled towards the bedroom section.

"Oh, you don't have to," Draco promised. "I think everyone else does it for you. Like that woman over there, with the employee name tag. You can just tell from the expression on her face that she's worrying about me as we speak."

"Probably afraid you'll break something."

"That is just too absurd to be deigned with a response," Draco said. He turned his attention to studying the bedroom they had just walked into. "Wow, I really believe someone could live in here if they wanted," he said, going into the adjoining bathroom and opening the cabinet behind the mirror to peer inside. "Look at all this: you've got a big bed, your own bathroom–" He waltzed over to the closet to the left of the bed and flung it open, "–a nice, albeit somewhat smallish, closet. And all over the rest of this store is everything else you could ever need to live comfortably."

"Except for food and clothes," Harry observed.

"No, just except for clothes. There's a cafe downstairs."

Harry blinked. "Oh. Well then, except for clothes."

"Which one would bring with them when they came."

"Are we planning to move into a Muggle furniture store now?" Harry asked jokingly. "Because I wish you'd told me sooner. I wouldn't have wasted any money on our apartment if I'd known."

Laughing, Draco walked up to the bed and threw himself backwards onto it, stretching his limbs as far as they would go. Harry watched him close his eyes, a blissful smile on his face.

"Comfy?" Harry asked.

"Yes, indeed," the blond replied. "I believe we need to buy this bed, Harry."

"We just bought a new mattress two weeks ago when we moved in," Harry pointed out.

"But this one is so much more comfortable than ours," Draco said, a pout audible in his voice. "Come on, try it."

So swiftly that Harry's mind almost didn't register what was happening, Draco sat up, grabbed his hand, and yanked him down onto the bed as well so that they were lying side by side. When Harry glanced over, he saw Draco grinning broadly in such a way that clearly suggested devious intentions.

"Well?" he asked.

"Hmm," Harry muttered, pretending to look bemused. "I suppose it _is_ rather comfortable."

"Yes, it is," Draco agreed. "Only think of how nice it would be to come home to this every day." He trailed his fingers slowly along Harry's arm; Harry just barely suppressed a shiver.

"This is unfair manipulation and you know it," he muttered, his eyes darting around to make sure there was no one in sight. As it was, the bedroom they were in only had one doorway, and the bed was not in a position to be seen through it unless someone entered the room.

"Do I?" Draco leaned in to nuzzle the side of Harry's face, brushing his nose against Harry's cheek, the tip of his ear, his jawbone. Sighing, Harry finally gave in and turned Draco's face so that they could kiss properly.

But of course, his hopes that perhaps a simple kiss would be enough for Draco were futile. Draco immediately deepened the kiss, pushing Harry back so that he could climb on top of him. Harry supposed that he probably ought to resist, seeing as they were on their way to a very heated snogging session on a test-bed in a Muggle furniture store, but after a few seconds of thought (and of Draco's tongue doing exquisite things to his own), he decided that saying anything wasn't really worth it.

Instead, he tightened his hold on Draco's shoulders and nipped at his lower lip, making the blond moan softly against his mouth. He could feel Draco's hands knotting in the back of his shirt, and he took the opportunity to flip them over so that he was on top. Having expected Draco to fight this, he was surprised when Draco simply slid his hands underneath Harry's shirt and began to ghost his fingers lightly along Harry's back. The simple feeling of skin touching skin made Harry shudder, and Draco hooked his legs around Harry's thighs in response, as if he were trying to hold Harry in one place. Harry moved his lips downwards, alternately kissing and sucking on the tender spot between Draco's collarbone and the rest of his neck. He had discovered long ago that Draco was extremely ticklish, and he tended to use this knowledge to his advantage. Just as he had expected, Draco let out a gasp and bucked, pressing his hips up against Harry's. His surroundings vague and distant now, Harry reached down and began to fumble with Draco's belt buckle.

"Wait! Someone's coming!"

Sure enough, the sound of shoes clacking against the linoleum floor was growing slowly louder. The two men jumped to their feet, looking around frantically for a hiding place. Harry had just resigned himself to whatever outcome resulted from their being found when Draco groaned and shoved him into the tiny closet next to the bed, pulling the door closed on the both of them. Harry closed his eyes and tried not to breathe.

"What do you think of this?" a male voice asked hopefully.

"Oh, I don't know," replied an airy female voice. "I don't think I like the style of the frame. It's a little too symmetrical – it almost looks like a box. Don't you agree?"

"Perhaps." The man sounded disappointed.

"The color is nice, of course," the woman added quickly. "But I don't like the shape. Too square. Shall we go look at the next one?"

Harry and Draco waited until the sound of their shoes faded before they exploded out of the closet.

"What on earth possessed you...?" Harry choked out, collapsing onto the side of the bed.

"You went along with it," Draco reminded him cheerfully. "And truth be told, I've always wanted to snog someone in a potentially public place. Adds a bit of excitement to the whole thing."

"Excitement," Harry repeated dryly. "Yes. That's exactly what I was thinking."

Draco shook his head, smiling slightly, and then suddenly beamed from ear to ear as an idea hit him.

"Hey, Harry, guess what?"

"What?"

"We just came out of the closet!"

Harry groaned loudly. "Okay, I reckon it's time to go now."

Standing up, he straightened his clothes, patted down his hair to the best of his abilities, and readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. After making sure that Draco was also presentable, the two walked out of the bedroom together.

"We're out of time for silverware now," Harry announced, looking at his pocket watch. "We'll be late to dinner if we stay here any longer."

"I guess we'll just have to come back another time," Draco said flippantly.

Harry's jaw dropped.

"You're willing to come back?" he asked in disbelief.

"Sure," Draco shrugged. "It's not that bad. In fact, it's kind of fun, actually, when you get over the whole idea of being surrounded by Muggles and whatnot."

"Wow. I'm impressed."

Draco smirked. "Not as much as you will be when I beat you in a race to the lobby."


End file.
